1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to print setting processing of print data with a record as a unit of processing. In particular, the present invention relates to a variable data print processing technique.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, in Variable Data Printing (hereinafter also referred to as “VDP”) for printing data in accordance with the needs for each user, the registered customer data or the like for a single job is printed by using a record as a unit. The term “record” refers to a unit of processing for a series of VDP. For example, when printing is performed on a customer by customer basis, one record is constituted by print data for one customer. One VDP job may include many records ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands. In a job for VDP, the job is associated with a variable object which may vary depending on each of the records, is combined with a master object which serves as the common background of the records, and the resultant data is printed. Such a job for VDP is managed by using a job as a unit even if a plurality of records is included, and is hereinafter referred to as a “VDP job”. Also, an object, which is employed for multiple times in a job, is referred to as a “reusable object”. A bitmap image or intermediate data, which has been subject to image expansion, is held and reused for a subsequent usage, whereby processing time may be reduced. A master object is also an example of reusable object.
As VDP has been widely used, there has been an increasing demand for providing an exception setting for records. Hereinafter, an exception setting for a plurality of records is referred to as a “record exception setting”. FIG. 21A shows an example in which print media for three records is specified by a user using a setting (tabbed paper, thick paper) that is different from the basic setting (plain paper). Basic setting information is applied to the entire record for the print data. Also, the record length indicates the number of pages constituting a record. In the present embodiment, each of the records has four pages, and thus, the record length is four. For each of the records, a tabbed paper is set to the first page, a thick paper is set to the fourth page, and a plain paper (basic setting) is set to the second and third pages.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2004-185489 discloses a method for providing an exception setting to a normal document without record information. For a document having a hierarchical structure, a print setting that does not apply to all pages is provided to the designated page(s) other than the entire pages.
In the technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2004-185489, a specified operation needs to be performed for all of the pages for which a user wishes to provide an exception setting, and processing adapted to a VDP job is not particularly performed. For example, when a direct mail, which has been personalized for each customer, is generated as a VDP job for printout, a user needs to specify a page(s) to be subject to an exception setting using the serial page number based on the leading page of the first record. In the example shown in FIG. 21B, for the serial page numbers 1 to 12 ranging from the first record to the third record, a user needs to provide an exception setting (tabbed paper) for pages 1, 5, and 9, and provide an exception setting (thick paper) for pages 4, 8, and 12. Thus, even when the same exception setting is repeated for each record, a user needs to specify the pages for all records, for which a user wishes to provide an exception setting, using the serial page number starting from the leading page of the first record, resulting in a complicated operation.